Hi friends, I'm Shazzbaa! (She/ Her)
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My obsessions shift erratically so whatever you followed me for: I can't guarantee how much there will be of it. Whatever I'm drawing right now: I can't guarantee when I will stop. ENJOY THE RIDE
Got an ask recently that was something to the effect of "what does sam think about [phrase that's incomprehensible to me]" so here's a gentle and friendly reminder to Fallen London folks that:
I am still actively but slowly playing through the game! I am not caught up with the most recent content nor do I play stories as soon as they come out
I am avoiding spoilers! Please don't ask me about stuff if you don't know if I've touched it. "Has Sam done [specific ES]" or "has Sam played through [name of the overarching story]" are okay, but please don't add stuff like "Has Sam gotten to the giant rat yet" or "Has Sam done the part of this storyline with the giant rat" or "Has Sam done this storyline? there's a giant rat in it so it's right up his alley" -- I want to discover the giant rat myself!!!!!!!
I am playing Fallen London mostly blind! I know the community is (understandably) more casual about spoilers, so for right now I don't keep up with the larger fandom so that I can experience the game for myself. This means there's a lot of things that are Common Fandom Knowledge that I do not know. If it feels like everyone is talking about a thing, please don't assume that means I know about it!
List of things I've done in Fallen London and are thus totally chill to talk to me about:
Every ambition (Sam has completed Light Fingers, and I watched friends play through the others and know the basic gist.) (No post-ambition unlocks or tie-ins, though, please! Not even hints!)
Evolution
These Exceptional/Fate-locked Stories: Avulsion, Every Good Boy Deserves Fun, Eins Fleins Kleins Wondrous Circus, The Stolen Soiree, Father's Oils, Shape of Infinity, Life of Clay, Old New Drowned & Blue, Why of Eels, The Pale Tabernacle, Memories of Mozart, Death and Tax Evasion, Nest in the Eaves, Arcana, Laws of the Game, Slobgollion, Dream of a Thousand Tails, Stripes of Wrath, the Bloody Wallpaper, Exile's Chalice, Reunion, Icarian Cup, The Shallows, The Stag & The Shark, For All the Saints Who From Their Labours Rest, the Marriage of Feducci, All Things Must End, and Clay Man's Arm.
Things I've posted about doing/discovering on either this blog or my afterdark blog
For any of the above, I absolutely welcome "Hey what choice did Sam make/what did Sam think about this specific part" type asks! Just keep in mind that Samuel (and me) may not have had the same knowledge you have about what's going on, especially if the ES touches on setting lore.
Things I am especially Avoiding Spoilers for:
I'm in the midst of Railway and being very slow about it LMAO. Since you can kinda unlock/discover stuff out of order I'd like to just avoid info on anything I haven't directly referenced here.
DONT TELL ME ABOUT FIRMAMENT!!!!!! One time someone on bluesky just replied to a piece of art I posted with unrelated firmament spoilers out of the blue and I'm still flabbergasted about this lmao. DONT DO THIS!!!!! ILL PLAY IT EVENTUALLY!!!!!!!!
Setting Lore! I've really been enjoying the way Fallen London makes you piece together implications from 10 different sources to figure out what's up with its weirdness. casually links to Phos's good post about lore spoilers and letting people be wrong about stuff when they don't have all the lore yet.
Also, this hasn't happened, but just in case: please don't send me "FIRMAMENT SPOILERS: firmament is cool and you should play it" or "spoilers it turns out Feducci totally smokes weed thats a canon fact this is definitely a real spoiler /j" asks as a joke b/c I might panic and block/delete before I've even read the whole thing LMAO.
Thanks for understanding, everyone! Sharing doodles and thoughts about Sam's adventures on the wider internet has been a lot of fun; I wanna make sure I can keep doing that comfortably!
the funniest thing about Poor Edward's bizarre courting gifts is that we know he knows how to give normal gifts.
BECAUSE HE DID!!! TO CLARA
When tasked with convincing this lady to go along with his super weird ask, Poor Edward promised her wealth and gifted her expensive jewellery. This is pretty basic but it's so normal and it means we know he can do this. He knows how to do this. He CAN give normal appealing gifts and CHOSE NOT TO. He CAN insincerely promise you something that you actually want BUT NO!! Moon-milk dealt him a terrible blow by forcing him to want to be loved as his true authentic self, a person who feels romantic about sending you grave dirt in the mail. THESE GIFTS HAD TO BE FROM THE HEART. UNFORTUNATELY
HAHA GOSH IM TORN ON THIS HONESTLY. On the one hand I WOULD COMPLETELY BELIEVE THIS and its very compelling. Also incredible to imagine Edward having to make himself seem dateable multiple times for his job, having successfully pulled this off several times, and then just fumbling so terribly with YOU because suddenly he really means it. On the other hand [papers fly as I dig through my drawer full of headcanons and go off on a huge tangent]
So, I believe Clara was ultimately chosen for her voice, since an inhuman song was needed during the pregnancy and for the birth. Having both the training of an opera singer and a sister who is equally capable of performing this bizarre song makes her a pretty perfect candidate -- built in backup singer! But even on her own, she's very specialised and must've required a significant effort to pick out -- there's a finite number of Skilled Opera Singers Slightly Past Their Prime Who Won't Be Missed And Can Handle A Vigorous Pregnancy and while I don't think anyone involved in the Orphanage is conflicted about burning through artists as disposable experiments, practically speaking this requirement makes replacing her a bit of a pain.
The question then becomes, did the Orphanage... know what they were looking for? Did they go through several failures before figuring out what they would need in a candidate? How prepared was the Orphanage to birth a hybrid?
The thing is that Poor Edward seems to have had a decent idea of what he was doing, actually. We know, at the very least, that Clara was taught the song of birthing and Edward had the moon-silk ready to go for the birth (until he started Acting Weird). These specifics would be hard to get via trial and error -- while getting the songs from drownies is intuitive-ish, it's unlikely that you'd be able to glean "needs a nest of this very specific material that can't be acquired in London" from a failed attempt; you would learn that by observing and studying moon-misers' actual reproductive process, which, given that they need a whole constellation in place to herald a new star, feels like it's probably not a common event. Edward doesn't seem likely to have performed this research, and frankly I think he is too young to have been able to -- so if he's this knowledgeable, he must be working off of someone else's notes. I also find it interesting that Mr Fires is so weirdly confident about how the hybrid's venom will function, considering this is an experimental hypothesised creature that's never been successfully crossbred, and it turns out to be at least partially correct - the hybrid's milk is MUCH stronger, seems to create a more self-sacrificial love, and does not seem to wear off (though I think it is ultimately wrong about this being indistinguishable from Real Love). So maybe Mr Fires just knows a lot about moon-misers....... but it also initially hoped that natural moon-milk would work and only discovered it wouldn't after the Orphanage's many experiments. Where is this confident hypothesis about the hybrid's venom coming from?
One option: Dr. Vaughan. She was on the run from the Masters, after all, and her research -- what she describes as "her life's work" studying moon-misers -- was confiscated but not destroyed. Being an agent of the Masters would surely give Poor Edward access to this confiscated research.
I'm suspicious of how quickly Dr. Vaughan recognises what's going on. You explain to her what the deal is with Clarabelle and she immediately starts asking you questions like "Does her skin glow yet", a weird expectation to have about a situation that you would think would be completely new to her. Dr Vaughan is described to you as being involved in the wildly disparate fields of "feminine medicine" and "obscure zoology". When she opens up about her research, she tells you that she suspects moon-misers have been purposely bred to create moon-milk (and at the end of the ambition, apparently believes that your hybrid child may be able to produce viable offspring). She no longer remembers her original research clearly, so throughout the ambition each next step of the process comes to her frustratingly last-minute -- but she certainly does know exactly what to do at every step of the process.
SO. I think Dr Vaughan might have studied this exact thing: The Viability Of A Human-Miser Hybrid. Her specialisation and knowledge is too suspiciously on point. She believed moon-milk was created by specific breeding, so it follows that breeding with a human could change how moon-milk functions. Mr Fires' confidence in the effect this will have on the resulting creature's venom could then come from this research, from the informed speculation of the only human expert on this subject.
(Aside: as I was pondering my thoughts on this, I was turning over in my mind that there is at least one major step the Orphanage seems unprepared for -- bringing Clara into Parabola. The fact that Poor Edward seems to have no idea where you're hiding until after making his pact (and that even after getting his powers, he doesn't expect a silverer PC's ability to fight back) has to me always suggested that he is not knowledgeable about Parabola, that this wasn't an option he was aware of until the Boil of Calamities appeared to him. But Dr. Vaughan asserts that the impossible birth must happen in an impossible place, so how exactly were they planning to-- WAIT IS THAT WHY CLARABELLE WAS IN THE ROYAL BETH. Surely they would otherwise just keep her in the Orphanage regardless of how sane she was. Did Edward know the birth needed to happen in an "impossible place" and THE ROYAL BETHLEHEM HOTEL IS THE MOST IMPOSSIBLE PLACE POOR EDWARD KNEW OF? Did he drive her insane as a pretense to keep her in this place that borders the Is-Not??? I guess that'd be weird with them attaching her to the Orphanage later but who knows whats in poor edward's mind at any point in time. Okay anyway,)
TL;DR all this to say: My personal headcanon is that some of Dr. Vaughan's research prior to Light Fingers addressed the overlap of her two areas of specialisation -- could you make a human-miser hybrid, and what would be the likely result? I think her notes may have even been the source of this idea, and Poor Edward was working from those notes, thus he had a surprisingly firm grasp on what was needed to make this happen. I don't think I'd say Clara was the First Attempt -- I'm sure there were experiments done in the Orphanage to work through the basic logistics of this terrible endeavour on people who weren't expected to survive -- but I think it's surprisingly possible that she could have been the first Serious Candidate.
[as always, don't add spoilers to this post, please! if any of this pondering is confirmed or contradicted by later content please don't tell me/don't hint where it is! "there's other stuff in Fallen London that contradicts this" is okay but I'd like to avoid "what about this thing that happens in [story you haven't gotten to]" or "when you get to [other story] there's more info on this" comments! thank you all! SORRY FOR TACKING THIS FOOTER AT THE END OF EVERY POST LMAO]
the funniest thing about Poor Edward's bizarre courting gifts is that we know he knows how to give normal gifts.
BECAUSE HE DID!!! TO CLARA
When tasked with convincing this lady to go along with his super weird ask, Poor Edward promised her wealth and gifted her expensive jewellery. This is pretty basic but it's so normal and it means we know he can do this. He knows how to do this. He CAN give normal appealing gifts and CHOSE NOT TO. He CAN insincerely promise you something that you actually want BUT NO!! Moon-milk dealt him a terrible blow by forcing him to want to be loved as his true authentic self, a person who feels romantic about sending you grave dirt in the mail. THESE GIFTS HAD TO BE FROM THE HEART. UNFORTUNATELY
HEHEHE MORE ARTFIGHT, im super happy with this one so it gets its own post too -- Mal is mafic's FLOC over on ArtFight, and she and Sam have been friends and sparring partners for a while.... they're also both monster-hunters, and between her monstrous anatomy and Sam's shapeling arts I just think a fight between them would be a wild thing to see
It's artfight time!!! im on team tragedy and jumping in with some characters i just think are neat.... @pariambod's tsuneo (big fan of all their ocs but i couldn't resist Evil Mafia Guy In A Suit obviously), @paexie's joan, and reverie belongs to lodrawsfilth over on bluesky!!
MORE SKETCHES OF SAM'S PARISH COUNCIL...... I'm just very attached to all of them. truly a miracle this weird church got off the ground
comments on each drawing under the cut:
Samuel did not seduce Percy when I did All The Saints, but HE WAS... TEMPTED... so i like to imagine they still have gay feelings for each other that they're both never going to act on. Just good friends who find normal excuses to Hold Hands In A God-Fearing Way
The Crimson Captain describes himself as a member of the Brazen Brigade and visibly aligns himself with the Drummer when you meet him at feast of the rose, so I REALLY DID NOT EXPECT HIM TO FREAK OUT ABOUT EVERY DRUMMER-RELATED CHOICE BUT HES SO DISTRAUGHT CONSTANTLY... i got a devil with crippling ptsd...
I can't get over how much the vice-admiral is not even PRETENDING to be sincere about this lmao
Anyway given Percy's weird fascination with the old Hell saints and the Captain having five emotional breakdowns every time anyone tries to get information about the old Hell saints these two should DEFINITELY interact right
I know VERY LITTLE about the New Sequence (no additional info or hints in reblogs/comments please, I'm playing blind and want to discover more about this in the games!!) but Samuel has encountered them a couple of times, and he has, uh, seen the light of the Dawn Machine, BUT HE DOESNT REMEMBER IT...... i just think it would be neat if the Vice-Admiral is so forward about his intentions because he can Tell Sam's had this experience. Meanwhile Sam has zero memory of this and doesn't know why this guy expects him to be on board lmao. Fits unnervingly with the little "well done" wink at the end...
Oh I'm so sorry ive been leaving out the most important member of Sam's parish council: THIS RANDOM MOUSE WE FOUND
The Captain expressing gratitude and loyalty to Sam for keeping the church free from Hell's influence and promising to defend it, after spending his entire tenure on the Parish Council being warily pessimistic about the idea that any of this could ever last..... i just had a little emotion about this useless devil thats all
Recently Boo ran a game for some friends that was a super simplified version of the TTRPG Ink, shortened into a game of a couple sessions. The basic gist is that your character's origin can be basically any genre, but they're dead, trying to move on, and the complicated emotions surrounding your death manifest as a Shadow that protects you while you traverse the afterlife. The mechanics were kinda rough but IT WAS CUTE AND FUN. Anyway here's our party!! Im playing the middle aged man with the eldritch shadow obviously
[also pictured at the bar: our friend's rat furry adventurer from another time who kept getting confused by modern technology, @magpiemalarkey's teen ghost Maddy happily explaining all this weird stuff to him, and @doodledragondoll's "Decker" (with a character designed by Boo) who spent 90% of our time in limbo convinced it was an elaborate simulation.]
Boo added a bar we could stop at, staffed by a single skeleton, with drinks that had various mechanical boosts (but no alcohol, to the great dismay of our rat friend). They DID have capri sun pouches though so obv I got that
The character I made was Quincy, a space researcher of some sort who died by getting pulled/blown/pushed out of the ship's airlock and wasn't sure how it happened. He constantly insisted it was probably a mechanical failure, while his EXTREMELY UNSETTLING empty-space-suit Shadow hinted at a suspicion of something more sinister, an unresolved question he had to let go of before he could move on. Anyway as this thing got creepier and creepier over the course of the game the other party members became INCREASINGLY UNEASY around him, which was great with Quincy himself being mostly just frustratedly polite about the whole being-stuck-in-limbo ordeal
Do you think he might've dug up your coffin, when you disappeared from London. It touched you, it held you, your blood might still be on it... Did he dig it up? Did he take it? Did he save the dirt from your burial, a later gift? Did he keep the coffin in his home? Did he ever lie in it when he was desperate and you were nowhere to be found?
Hey y'all, uh, know how your captain lost his eye, right...?
Fallen London has a few recurring events, one of which involves a bomb run that accidentally awakens an angry zee creature... but THIS time had a SURPRISE TWIST of instead awakening A FLEET OF SHIPS OVERTAKEN BY EYE-STEALING SPIDERS that have amalgamated to pilot them and menace London's waters.
Samuel is doing so normal and fine thanks for asking
I went through setting up the Burrow church with Samuel recently (extremely funny and embarrassing for him that this storyline starts with getting slapped on the wrist by the entire church of england. can a man not be catholic in peace) and I got very very attached to Sam's absolute disaster of a parish council, so I wanted to try to figure out how to draw them...... I didnt mean to render them all i just got carried away.......
Basic gist is that you are charged by a "Delightful Reverend" with helping to organise a "church in the wild," with the aim of making a church with the traditional vibes of a liturgical christian church but without the christianity, one that's open to humans and devils and anyone else and can't be claimed by either group. My favourite bit of this is that you are asked to assemble a Parish Council and they all give you their advice on any decision you have to make, which MAY OR MAY NOT ACTUALLY BE HELPFUL. Despite being very Christian himself, Sam was intrigued by the idea and wanted to give it an honest try. He chose:
Percy aka The Intrepid Deacon, an alarmingly hell-curious but deeply genuine deacon friend from a different adventure where Sam worked hard to help him seek answers while keeping his soul safe. Probably the one most aligned with Sam's values and the only person here that he trusts. I love him.
The Retired Vice-Admiral, who was the Reverend's pick and Sam didn't want to overrule her on everything. HES SO NORMAL and clearly just trying to recruit for some kind of sun cult. THIS ISNT THAT KIND OF CHURCH, MAN. I love him, Sam wanted to punch him on multiple occasions
The Crimson Captain!!! Sam wanted a devil on the council but felt oddly more comfortable with one of the devils who still serves the old devil monarchy.... They feel the most like they have a Faith as he understands it so there's a strange sort of kinship there? ANYWAY this guy is the soggiest devil imaginable, clearly still haunted by his mistakes and losses in an old Hell war in every piece of feedback he gives. Like getting relationship advice from someone who's been divorced six times. I love him.
And the Delightful Reverend herself! Every time you have to make a decision and ask her opinion shes like "augh i hate making choices" thus making her THE MOST RELATABLE CHARACTER IN FALLEN LONDON, A GAME THAT IS 80% MAKING CHOICES. She's very hard to draw but I love her.
[As always, no spoilers or hints for Fallen London things in comments or reblogs please! I'm still actively playing through the game (very slowly) and prefer to discover things myself!]
oh my goodness i never posted this, kicks this out of my drafts..... @little-red-notebook made a comment about Peter mistaking one of Sam's reflections for Sam and going up to kiss him before realising his mistake, and what an amazing thought.... I feel like his normal reflection would be pretty chill about it but the silent partner never made it to Dating, HE WOULD BE SO CONFUSED. Also he is the reflection entity least able to quickly correct this mistake. Sorry I'm just so entranced by having an Even More Sopping Wet Samuel
Sam is that situation of like, guy who thrives on physical touch and handles this by getting in fights. So yeah, arm wrestling would def fall into that. He's quite strong and pretty good at it .....most of the time!
LMAO im so glad you asked. Samuel has been making very safe and professional expeditions into the Moulin Wastes!! where he definitely doesn't forget to keep an eye on how many supplies they need to get home and he also certainly hasn't been abusing his shapeling arts abilities to travel through impossible spaces so much that the Wastes are trying to reshape him. OBVIOUSLY!!!
The text for getting extra eyes makes it sound like they'll probably eventually disappear on their own, and Sam's abilities could probably cover an eye pretty easily, but it's fun if resisting the Waste's alterations is a little above his paygrade... Maybe he can ask some rubberies to help him fix this eventually, but for now he's just wearing a hat with a brim and hoping it's not too obvious.
He ALSO got a thing that makes you GLOW WITH VIRIC LIGHT around the same time, which for Sam specifically probably makes his scales stand out a lot more than usual? So anyway he's been doing fine. Just head on back to London, mate. Nobody will notice.
So, did Sam enjoy the circus? (the horrible clown ES, my beloved)
Samuel had a great time at the circus. :) until he wasn't having a great time at the circus.....
Honestly Sam felt a little... bad? about this, though I don't think he'd choose differently in the end. This ancient denizen of the Neath that truly seemed to be trying to understand and play nice with humanity, but couldn't take "no" for an answer, was someone he would really like to have found some way to compromise with but ultimately had to reject and oppose. The Dreamer's conflicted deliberation sounded less like someone encountering a thing they want, but it's Weird, and more like someone justifying a subpar choice because its attainable. "But if everyone is happy and truly wants this, then maybe it's fine?" was a much harder sell to someone who's seen the Orphanage. Sam never found out why everyone working the circus was so ecstatic to be here, and that's really the most unsettling part.
I've seen both endings of this story and I REALLY like that both feel unsettling, but potentially??? good -- just, one is more Neathy than the other. You have to accept that this strange, eldritch arrangement could possibly be a nice outcome in order to feel good about installing the little rat as the ringmaster, and you have to sympathise with the Rapture-in-Witness to even consider it. Samuel sympathised, but he could not in good conscience encourage that bargain.
Anyway I regret making him say no to volunteering to be a beast. I don't know if it's anything other than a little bit of different text, but I think he should've considered it lmao
